Joe Kent, one of the US’s top counterterrorism officials, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing his opposition to the Iran war and what he said was Israel’s influence over the Trump administration’s policies.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, wrote in a social media post. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Kent is the highest-ranking Trump administration official to quit over the Iran war. His resignation bluntly exposes how the Iran war is expanding fissures in US President Donald Trump’s coalition.
“I always thought he was weak on security,’’ Trump said of Kent on Tuesday.
“They (Iran) have been a threat for a long time," Trump said, avoiding the word "imminent" which was key to Kent’s argument.
Kent is a close friend of Tucker Carlson, the Trump ally who has emerged as the sharpest critic of the war.
In a brief interview, Carlson praised Kent’s resignation.
“Joe is the bravest man I know, and he can’t be dismissed as a nut,” Carlson said. “He’s leaving a job that gave him access to highest-level relevant intelligence. The neocons will now try to destroy him for that. He understands that and did it anyway.”
Kent has long had a penchant for conspiracy theories, claiming without evidence that intelligence officials had a hand in the violence around the January 6 attack on the Capitol. And some Republicans were quick to call out Kent’s remarks on Israel.
Representative Don Bacon, a former brigadier general in the Air Force who serves on the Armed Services Committee, reposted Kent’s letter with the comment "good riddance".
“Anti-Semitism is an evil I detest, and we surely don’t want it in our government,” Bacon wrote on social media.
Kent’s post included a resignation letter addressed to Trump, in which he argued that Israeli officials drew the US into the conflict with Iran.
In the letter, Kent wrote about what he saw as a “misinformation campaign” by high-ranking Israeli officials and the news media, which he said had undermined Trump’s "America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran".
A veteran of the Iraq war, Kent said that the arguments in support of attacking Iran, and promises of a swift victory, echoed the debate over going to war against Iraq in 2003.
Kent also referred to his late wife Shannon, a military cryptologist killed in Syria.
“As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives,” he wrote.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee has long criticised Kent. In a statement on Tuesday, he said Kent’s record was troubling and that he should never have been confirmed. But Warner added that he agreed with him, at least in part, on the Iran war.
“On this point, he is right. There was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East,” Warner said.
New York Times News Service